AI & IP Litigation Tracker
The decisions and laws defining how intellectual property applies to artificial intelligence, organized by the question each one answers — from training-data fair use to AI authorship and digital replicas. Each entry links to our full, source-cited analysis. Updated as new rulings land.
Currently tracking 13 decisions and statutes across 4 fronts. Also see our pillar guide, AI & Intellectual Property.
AI Training & Fair Use
Whether copying copyrighted works to train AI models is fair use — the central question for every model builder.
Bartz v. Anthropic: Transformative Training, Unforgivable Acquisition Judge Alsup held that training a large language model on books is 'exceedingly transformative' fair use — while refusing to extend that blessing to the pirated library that fed it. The $1.5 billion settlement that followed shows where the real exposure lies. Kadrey v. Meta: A Fair-Use Win That Reads Like a Plaintiffs' Brief Two days after Bartz, Judge Chhabria also found AI training to be fair use — but went out of his way to say the result reflected a failure of advocacy, not a vindication of the practice. His 'market dilution' theory is the doctrine to watch. Thomson Reuters v. Ross: The First Refusal of Fair Use in the AI Era Before the generative-AI rulings, a Delaware court rejected fair use for using copyrighted material to build an AI legal-research tool — and pointedly distinguished the software cases the technology industry had relied upon. Its reach is narrower than its reputation. Andersen v. Stability AI: The Theory That Diffusion Models Can 'Contain' the Works They Trained On A federal court let visual artists' direct and induced copyright claims against AI image generators proceed on the theory that protected works may persist inside the model itself — a holding that reframes how courts think about training data.
AI Output & Infringement
When model outputs reproduce or are substantially similar to training data, and the copyright-management-information claims that travel with them.
The New York Times v. OpenAI: Why a Manhattan Judge Let the Output-Infringement Claims Stand Judge Sidney Stein largely denied OpenAI and Microsoft's motions to dismiss, keeping alive the theory that ChatGPT's outputs and the conduct of its users can infringe — a sharp contrast with how California courts have treated similar allegations. Concord Music v. Anthropic: Why the Music Publishers Lost Their Bid to Halt AI Training A federal judge denied the music publishers a preliminary injunction against Anthropic over Claude's reproduction of song lyrics, finding their proposed order overbroad and their claimed harm unproven — even as a guardrails stipulation quietly reshaped the dispute. Stripping the Byline: The § 1202(b) Ruling in The Intercept Media v. OpenAI and the SDNY CMI Split Judge Rakoff let The Intercept's DMCA § 1202(b)(1) copyright-management-information claim against OpenAI survive dismissal while tossing the § 1202(b)(3) claim, splitting from Raw Story v. OpenAI on standing and reshaping CMI litigation in AI-training cases.
AI Authorship & Inventorship
Can an AI be an author or inventor? U.S. authorities have so far required a human.
Authorship Without an Author: Thaler v. Perlmutter and the Human Floor of Copyright The D.C. Circuit held that the Copyright Act requires a human author, foreclosing registration of a work generated autonomously by an AI system — and the Supreme Court has now declined to disturb that conclusion. Thaler v. Vidal: Why a Machine Cannot Be a Named Inventor — Yet The Federal Circuit held that the Patent Act's word 'individual' means a human being, so an AI system called DABUS cannot be listed as an inventor — without deciding whether AI-assisted inventions are patentable at all.
AI Voice, Likeness & Deepfakes
How the right of publicity and new digital-replica statutes apply to AI-generated voices and likenesses.
Lehrman v. Lovo: Why the Right of Publicity — Not Copyright — Governs AI Voice Cloning A federal court let voice actors' right-of-publicity and contract claims against an AI voice-cloning company proceed while dismissing their copyright theories. The decision maps the legal terrain for performers facing synthetic replicas of their voices. Young v. NeoCortext: When a Face-Swap App Meets California's Right of Publicity The Ninth Circuit let a Big Brother contestant's putative class action over the Reface deepfake app proceed, rejecting both a copyright-preemption defense and a transformative-use shield at the pleading stage. The ELVIS Act: Tennessee Makes 'Voice' a Protected Property Right Against AI Cloning Tennessee's 2024 ELVIS Act became the first U.S. law to write an individual's voice into the right of publicity and to reach the AI tools that clone it — a statute, not a court ruling, and a template other states are now copying. California's Digital-Replica Statutes: AB 2602 and AB 1836 Split the Living from the Dead California's two 2024 digital-replica laws take different routes — one voids consent-by-contract for living performers, the other extends the post-mortem right of publicity to AI replicas of the deceased — and together they reset the rules for Hollywood.
Educational content, not legal advice. This tracker summarizes publicly reported
decisions and statutes for general information. AI law is changing rapidly; verify current status
and consult a licensed attorney for your situation.